(CNN) - American officials who toured Guantanamo Bay Friday said their visit underscored their belief the detention facility must close.

“We continue to believe that it is in our national interest to end detention at Guantanamo, with a safe and orderly transition of the detainees to other locations," read a joint from White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California.FULL POST

(CNN) - Justice Sonia Sotomayor's life story has proven financially lucrative, earning her more than $3 million last year, and a way out of mild debt.

Financial disclosure reports released Friday by Sotomayor and her eight Supreme Court colleagues show the Bronx native earned $1.9 million in book advances in 2012 alone. She had earlier reported a $1.2 million advance when she signed the contract with Knopf Doubleday three years ago to pen her memoirs.FULL POST

(CNN) – Ongoing questions into Attorney General Eric Holder's handling of leak probes – and now his role in government phone surveillance – should lead him to at least consider resigning, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said Friday.

Manchin, a conservative Democrat often at odds with President Barack Obama's administration, said any government official who seems to be losing authority should make the same calculation.FULL POST

CNN's GUT CHECK | for June 7, 2013 | 5 p.m.
– n. a pause to assess the state, progress or condition of the political news cycle

DOMESTIC MONITORING: OBAMA: NO ONE LISTENING TO YOUR CALLS… “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” President Barack Obama said Friday as he tried to reassure Americans who have had to digest a dizzying array of revelations in the past few days. All the revelations about U.S. surveillance programs in recent days have put the government on the defensive, set privacy advocates howling for reform, and left millions of Americans somewhere in the middle, wondering what the news means to them and what, if anything, they should do about it. – Michael Pearson

EVERY MEMBER OF CONGRESS: “The programs that have been discussed over the past couple of days in the press, are secret in the sense that they are classified but they're not secret in the sense that when it comes to telephone calls, every member of congress has been briefed on this program,” Obama said on Friday.

(CNN) – After President Barack Obama asserted Friday that lawmakers opposed to the government's phone surveillance program had a chance to raise concerns, one Democrat said he's been trying to alert the American public for years about attempts to mine their personal data.

Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat who has long pushed for greater transparency in the government's counterterror efforts, told CNN he had taken exhaustive steps to unveil the reasoning behind the National Security Agency's collection of phone call information.FULL POST

Washington (CNN) - Federal prosecutors want former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. to receive a sentence of four years in prison for misuse of $750,000 in campaign funds, which he used to cover personal expenses.

A government sentencing memo released Friday also calls for Jackson to pay back that money to the campaign and asks for the forfeiture of some of Jackson’s assets to do so.FULL POST

(CNN) - A Texas actress has been arrested in connection with allegedly ricin-tainted letters that were mailed last month to President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, federal law enforcement sources said Friday.

Investigators believe Shannon Rogers Richardson, also known as Shannon Rogers Guess, mailed the letters, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation said.